This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Sacramento Bee announces it will charge for some online content -- update: Raleigh and Anchorage, too

The Sacramento Bee announced yesterday it will begin charging for some online content.

Here is an excerpt from the "updated terms of service" the bee emailed to Sacbee.com's registers users:

From time to time, and at sacbee.com's sole discretion, there may be certain content available via subscription or surcharge, and such content will be clearly marked. Because this is an advertising-supported service, we encourage you to patronize the advertisers that help to make this service possible. Note that currently most news articles remain available for 30 days in the pages of sacbee.com. The Sacramento Bee's electronic archives may carry a fee per full-text article downloaded.

When the inter-net and alternative news sources caught on, the Sacramento Bee lost conservative subscribers in droves due to the Bee's biased reporting and editorial policies.The former conservative subscribers often read online and view the advertising shown.Now the Bee expects these people to pay for the privilege to be insulted again. I think not. If it didn't work for the print edition, what makes them think it will work for the electronic edition? For me, it will be good-bye Bee for a second time.

News is so depressing these days, many will opt not to pay for this swill, especially if it has an Obama Kool-Aid Spin. I can see many who will opt out of hearing/seeing/reading news on a daily basis. It's sad, but it is coming to that point. Don't trust the media, don't want to hear its depressing daily whine.

As a laid-off worker from The Kansas City Star, I can tell you with authority that the Star already had been charging for access to its archives for any story more than a week old. That policy was in place for quite some time before the announcements so ballyhooed on this blog and by Landsberg. However, I too expect they'll be phasng in more fees if the public accepts it.

If memory serves, they have been charging for the archives for almost 10 years. I also believe that that's a decision that was made beyond the local papers and involves an outside company handling the archives. Little vague, it's been years since I was given the the explanation.

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